By Aliza Flug, Senior Layout Editor and Social Media Manager
Every club, committee and society at Yeshiva University has relied on student leadership to keep it going. But when a club president or committee head graduates with nobody to take over, their club struggles to maintain its standards. The Yeshiva College Dramatics Society (YCDS) is no exception to this rule. While YCDS has put on plays dating back to 1936, their scale and quality had vastly declined by the 1960s. Drew Kopf (YC ‘68), was instrumental in YCDS’ revival, and it is thanks to the passion and commitment that he and students and faculty in years to follow brought to YCDS that it stands strong today, 90 years after its first performance.
In a letter Kopf wrote to YU President Ari Berman in 2017, he described that in the 1960s, YCDS was putting on plays, but they were usually smaller-scale skits, often Purim spiels (comedic skits) and performances at the Dean’s Reception. Even though there had been the occasional play, there was no consistency. Kopf wrote that while these skits were fun, “[t]here was no ‘drama’ in the Dramatics Society.” Learning about the professionalism that the society had in the ‘40s, discovering that they had sets, props and lights from Broadway, he was inspired to bring YCDS back to life.
During one of his first semesters in YU, Kopf took a speech class where he directed and acted in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. The play was originally put on just for classmates, but then later was performed for a larger audience in the Lamport Auditorium. The show was performed outside of YU, in a shul in Long Island and upstate New York at NCSY. After The Dumb Waiter, Kopf directed Arthur Laurents’ Home of the Brave and Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy.
Dr. Anthony Beukas, who was then a new speech professor became the faculty advisor for YCDS, but there was not a faculty director as there had been in previous years. “When I did it, it was just me, and a few other guys who tried out and got in the shows,” Kopf told the YU Observer. “And we marketed it and went around putting up flyers and people would come from all over.” He described these plays as being well received by the greater YU and Washington Heights communities. “We, the Yeshiva College Dramatics Society, and I, were, after a twenty year hiatus, in business again,” Kopf wrote in his letter. He became YCDS president in his senior year.
Kopf noted that after the first play he put on in Lamport, some rabbanim at YU asked him to find another location for future plays. Lamport had been used for High Holiday services, and they didn’t feel it was appropriate to put on a play there. The plays following that were performed in Furst Hall classroom 501. Despite this, Kopf felt that his efforts were generally supported by the rabbanim at YU.
Kopf spoke of one person who was particularly supportive: Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik. He first met Rav Soloveitchik as a student at Yeshiva University High School for Boys, now known as Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy (MTA), when he once sat down to share lunch with him. He described how Rav Soloveitchik quickly became a second father to him. Whenever he would see him, Rav Soloveitchik would address him by his Hebrew name, Dov, and ask how he was doing. “He was very encouraging to me even though theater is not what you would call mainstream yahadus [Judaism],” Kopf told the YU Observer. Kopf said that he felt comfortable doing what he did even though it was outside the norm, and it was people like Rav Soloveitchik who made sure he was comfortable.
With continued support, YCDS has been able to put on plays each year, growing in both student participation and professionality. After Kopf graduated from YU, Dr. Beukas began directing the YCDS plays and continued to do so for years later. Involvement in the plays eventually became an official course that could be taken for credit. After performing in various locations on the Wilf campus, YCDS (and SCDS!) now put on their plays in the Schottenstein Theater, which opened in 1989.
Kopf received a master’s degree in theater directing from Temple University after he graduated from YU. He was involved in many theater-related projects, producing shows, directing an opera, teaching acting courses and working as the cultural arts director for a JCC in New York. In 1988, he started his matting business, The Mat King, to support his theater projects. “When I gave up my theater [career], I started my business because I was going to use the business to pay for the shows I wanted to produce, but I fell in love with the business and it ended up being the reverse,” Kopf told the YU Observer.
Kopf is now also involved in other creative projects, such as watercolor and oil paintings. He is currently writing a musical comedy and created a patented anti-COVID invention to protect people from future infections.
When asked about pursuing a theater-related career, Kopf said, “You have to give yourself permission to just do it! You don’t have to get a degree, you just have to give yourself permission to just do it.” It is this mindset that pushed Kopf to re-establish YCDS, direct plays and pursue all his creative endeavors.
The YCDS page of the 1969 Masmid (the Yeshiva College student yearbook) describes YCDS as being a “virtual nonentity” two years prior. It goes on, “Today, after five fine productions—each more successful than the one before—the society has become one of the most highly respected and admired school organizations.” It is because of Drew Kopf that YCDS was revived, and it’s thanks to him and every YCDS president, faculty advisor and student leader in the decades that followed that the society stands strong and continues to produce beautiful, professional productions year after year.
Photo Caption: YCDS in 1968
Photo Credit: YU Masmid 1968